Rescue at sea questions

[SSgtPitt]

Listening to the news every morning I hear stories where refugees are leaving their home country in rafts, overloaded boats and anything else they can get their hands on that will float.
How many cruiser/sailers in their personal vessels have come across a situation where they've had to rescue refugees or someone lost at sea?
What did you do, how did you do it, where do you take them and who do you call?

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by SSgtPitt

Listening to the news every morning I hear stories where refugees are leaving their home country in rafts, overloaded boats and anything else they can get their hands on that will float.
How many cruiser/sailers in their personal vessels have come across a situation where they've had to rescue refugees or someone lost at sea?
What did you do, how did you do it, where do you take them and who do you call?

What follows is written in a friendly tone of voice, and is not intended to stop or prevent any further discussion of this topic. I am simply adding the link below to help you or others interested in this topic find more content within CF that applies to it.

This is a topic that has been discussed before (not too long ago) in CF with 212 comments in a long thread. Opinions on the matter differ greatly, and the thread was stopped after running through some arguments. Here is a link to the start of that thread:

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...es-134000.html

[SSgtPitt]

Thanks for the responce Steady Hand. Your responce was recv'd in the same fashion it was given. The search function on CF doesn't seem to return the results I want. I just searched for my own post "Rescue at Sea" and it didn't pull it up. Frustrating.

My question is different and isn't asking for hypothetical situations from arm chair sailors but real life encounters from Cruisers / Sailors with any persons they've had to rescue and what transpired. There's nothing I can find in this forum or online with actual stories.....but I know they're out there.

I watched a You tube video where an older man was rescued as they filmed his sail boat slowly sinking and then finally disappearing. It was a very sobering video.

My instinct would be to render aid immediatly with no hesitation, which could get me into trouble. I render aid several times a year on dry land, mostly in blizzards, and have never suffered for it. The open ocean is a different matter as you could be dealing with hostile people and unfriendly Govt's.